


how sharp our teeth

by Capitola



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Biting, Blood Drinking, Cannibalism, Frottage, Horror, Inspired by Raw (2016), Intercrural Sex, M/M, Multifandom Horror Exchange Treat, and I mean BITING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:06:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25639237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capitola/pseuds/Capitola
Summary: Caduceus gingerly cuts off a small piece and puts it in his mouth. It's tender and well-salted, with a faint tang of blood underneath, but not altogether unpleasant. It gives easily under his teeth as he chews and swallows, and before he's quite aware of what he's doing, he begins to cut off another piece. And another.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	how sharp our teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aunt_zelda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/gifts).



> Written as a treat for the Multifandom Horror Exchange.
> 
> Prompt:  
> \- What happens when Caduceus eats meat
> 
> Title from "Wolf Song," by Charming Disaster.

The banquet is served in the Western fashion, where plates of food are laid before the guests. The first two courses, a simple salad and a chilled beet soup, prove no difficulty, but the third course is a spectacle: a sizable deer roasted whole and set in the center of the table. Servers quickly set slices of steaming pink flesh in front of them. Caduceus makes an attempt to refuse politely, but only serves to draw the eyes of their host, the local lord, a few seats away.

"In the Empire," he comments, a pointed remark at Caduceus’s own foreignness, "it's customary for guests to eat what their hosts provide."

Caduceus can see Fjord’s shoulders straighten as he clears his throat to say something back to that, but he grabs hold of Fjord's arm underneath the table, and shakes his head. _Not worth it._ Just a little, just to be polite.

He picks up the knife with the serrated edge and the biggest fork ("The big one's for meat, not that you'll need that," Beau had said when explaining the place settings) and gingerly cuts off a small piece and puts it in his mouth. It's tender and well-salted, with a faint tang of blood underneath, but not altogether unpleasant. It gives easily under his teeth as he chews and swallows, and before he's quite aware of what he's doing, he begins to cut off another piece. And another. 

"Hey Caduceus, you, uh, you good?" Beau asks from his other side. 

"Hmm?" He says, realizing he's finished the meat on his plate and is sucking on the tines of his fork. "Oh, I'm fine. Just fine." Somewhat self-consciously, Caduceus sets down the fork. 

"Are you sure you’re feeling alright?" Fjord asks later, when they're back at their more modest rooms at the inn in town. Caleb had commented something about them being important enough to invite to dinner, but not enough to put up in the manor. If all the lord's hospitality is as loaded as the dinner invitation, it’s probably for the best.

“Fine, really,” Caduceus says. "One plate of meat, one evening of my life, can’t hurt. The Wildmother understands we're not able to be perfect." There is little conviction in the words as he says them aloud, and Fjord seems to sense it.

"But that’s the only reason you do it? For Her?” 

“I suppose.” It's less of a lie than a solid _yes_ and easier to stomach than a _no._ It’s how Caduceus grew up, in a house in the woods where they did not trap and they did not hunt. Everything at home was practice, everything at home was faith. When he found that, in the wider world, his aversion to meat made him unusual, it only served to solidify his conviction. 

“I think,” Fjord says, laying a light kiss on Caduceus’s cheek, “that if She can forgive me all my shortcomings, She can certainly allow you this one.”

Still later in the night, he wakes with his arms wrapped tight around Fjord from behind, an erection throbbing between his thighs and pressed against Fjord’s backside. Fjord has a hand on his thigh, gently shaking him awake.

"Cad?" Fjord says. "You awake?"

"Mrm." 

"Are you, ah, trying to ask me something?" He traces his hand delicately over the side of Caduceus’s hip. _Do you need me?_ his hand seems to say.

They’ve fucked a few times since beginning their relationship. For Caduceus, it was borne out of experimentation, and a desire to please Fjord, rather than satisfying much in the way of his own urges. Fjord had sensed his discomfort, and said he didn’t mind not experimenting much further, that he was content to just share a bed, and be close, if that was all Caduceus needed. Right now, though, Caduceus feels tense, weighed down with an unusual, heavy desire. 

"Yeah," he says. "I’d like that."

"How do you want me?"

He rolls his hips against Fjord, testing the waters. "Is this…?" Fjord slips down his pajama pants and Cad rucks up his nightshirt, slipping his cock between Fjord’s thighs. Fjord presses his thighs together around him, and _oh_ , there’s something so sweet in that sensation. Soft, needy noises that Caduceus hardly recognizes spill from his own mouth. He leans down to Fjord’s neck and bites sharp bruises as he ruts against him, feeling Fjord reaches a hand down to his own cock.

When they’re finished, they lie against each other, panting and sated.

At breakfast the next day, Caduceus is sticking to bread, as usual. There’s even jam, and a marmalade he’s already thinking about trying to recreate, though probably with a bit less sugar. Then the plate of bacon comes to a rest in front of Caduceus’s own place at the table. There are three slices left on there, a fact he normally wouldn’t notice except that there is something unusually appetizing in the smell. He glances around the table, but no one is asking for or even looking for the bacon. Three slices is just enough that nobody would notice if he took one.

The bacon is rubbery and greasy in his fingers, and he folds it back in on itself to pop it in his mouth surreptitiously. It's heavily seasoned, and very, very salty. It tastes even greasier than it had felt in his hand. He ought to find it disgusting, but if anything he is left wanting more. 

When the empty platter of bacon is discovered, a foot to the left of where Caduceus is sitting, Veth and Beau instantly round on each other, each accusing the other of taking more than her fair share. Fortunately, Jester orders another platter before anything truly ugly can be said. In all the commotion, no one looks twice at Caduceus, and he does not draw their attention. 

It keeps happening at meals; he'll find his way near a platter shoved to the side with someone else's food still on it, taking secretive bites of scraps and bones. Little bird bones crunch easily between his teeth, and the dry, brownish marrow at the center comes even closer than the meat to scratching the itch he's unearthed. But admitting to himself he's suddenly ravenous for these little scraps is hard enough without admitting that the true urge remains unsatisfied. 

By their previous standards, he and Fjord have been at each other like rabbits. Something about having Fjord next to him in the night is practically driving him mad, and they kiss and fumble and fuck each other like never before. 

Caduceus doesn't know what he'll do when they’re home in Xhorhas again, when he will be responsible for their meals, when they will expect him to keep cooking without meat because he _doesn’t_. He doesn’t eat meat. He’s just...slipping.

It comes to a head a week or so later, after a fight, as Caduceus is working a crossbow bolt out of Beau’s shoulder. He tries to do it slowly but even so, it’s tricky work. When he does get it free, the sight of the wound makes him a little dizzy. Blood seeping from the skin...so much of it. Just a taste surely couldn’t hurt…

The next thing he knows he’s on the ground, with his ears ringing, the taste of blood in his mouth and he doesn't know whether it's his blood or — 

“What the _fuck_ , Beau?” Jester shouts above him, distantly. 

“Fucker tried to drink my blood is what!” 

“I’m sure this was just a misunderstanding —”

“Don’t talk to me about _misunderstandings_ , Fjord. Your boyfriend had his _tongue_ on my _shoulder_.” 

“Cad, can you hear me Cad?” Fjord helps him up, and Caduceus feels a bit of healing energy dull the pain on the side of his head. “Is that — is that true?” 

Caduceus touches his fingers to his mouth, trying to make sense of what had seemed perfectly logical moments before. "I don't know.”

“Look,” Beau says, as soon as Jester finishes healing the wound in her shoulder. "It's one thing to be all sneaky and weird about taking meat from everyone else's plates. Nobody cares if you eat meat, but if my friends are going to drink my blood I prefer they _ask_ first." He glances at the rest of them and no one seems to be surprised at what Beau has said. It twists at his heart like an icicle, the idea that they’ve all _seen_ what he’s been doing, that they all _know_. He turns to Fjord again, and he knows from the searching look in his eyes that Fjord knows too. 

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus murmurs. “I wasn’t thinking.”

_Not thinking_ is a big part of how Caduceus tries to get through the next few days, as they return to Xhorhas, to the pace of life at home. _Not thinking_ about the flesh hung bare in a butcher’s window, about chickens hung up by their legs in the marketplace, blood draining on the ground. _Definitely_ not thinking how aware he feels of people’s pulses thrumming in their necks, all the sources of warm blood that surround him. 

The others are walking on eggshells around him, as though they’re worried he’s going to snap and turn on them like a mad dog. Veth suggests they cook a recipe she used to make at home, one with bones instead of mushrooms for stock. Yasha offers to show him how her tribe used to smoke meat for travel. Caduceus refuses them both, and throws himself into cooking all his old favorites from home, stews and salads that have never known a hint of flesh or blood. He and Fjord are still sharing a bed, but their cuddles are once again chaste. 

After almost a week of this, he goes to the butcher, buys a packet of chops and eats them raw in an alley. His teeth rip into the soft flesh and it feels like the most natural thing in the world, _natural_ in a horrible way that he never knew natural could feel. It’s better than the scraps, better than that first bite at the party - but not better than that brief taste of warm blood. He tells himself this is his last indulgence, that tomorrow he’ll go back to mushrooms and vegetables and grains. _Tomorrow, Mother, please_ , he thinks in silent prayer, but Melora is more silent to him than she’s ever been.

He goes back to the Xhorhaus and makes love with Fjord under the tree on the roof, paying no mind to who can see them, who can hear them. Fjord’s skin is tantalizing beneath his lips, flushed with hot blood. Caduceus’s teeth feel sharper in his mouth these days, ready to strike and ready to tear into things, but he keeps himself in check, leaving only bruises and drawing no blood.

The second time it happens, it’s not one of the Nein, which is both better and worse. They’re fighting a group of Tharizdun cultists, and one of them gets up behind Caduceus, pressing a knife to his throat. A half-orc, he thinks from the skin, but she’s taller than Fjord; nearly as tall as Caduceus, and broader. 

“No sudden movements,” she says, but her grip on him is unsteady. She’s not used to fighting things as big as she is. She’s holding him very close to her, close to her shoulder, close to her neck, and Caduceus sees an opportunity and seizes it. 

He sinks his teeth into her neck, ripping through flesh with a gush of blood. He tears off a chunk of skin and sinew, and swallows it in one gulp. The half-orc staggers back, the knife slipping from her grasp to the floor. Caduceus is about to catch her, about to pull her close so he can lap up the blood draining from her neck, but she’s down on the ground quicker than he can react, knocked over by a gigantic cat’s paw. He glances over to Caleb, and though Caleb’s expression is not easily shaken, there is a chill behind his eyes as he motions to Caduceus that he should wipe his face off.

Caduceus’s sleeve comes away bloody, and he has to force himself to resist sucking at the sodden fabric. As they finish dispatching with the cultists and investigating their hideout, he clings to the back of the group, not saying anything, fingers trembling around his staff.

As soon as they arrive home, Caduceus goes straight for their bedroom, Fjord following close at his heels. Caduceus sits down on the bed moments before his knees give out, and Fjord shuts the door behind him, hardly waiting to speak.

“What’s _wrong_ , Caduceus?”

Caduceus knows that “nothing” is not an answer anymore.

“For the past few weeks — since the party, where the meat was served,” He avoids looking at Fjord, avoids the look of confusion and pity in his eyes. “I’ve been craving meat — warm, fresh meat. And… and blood.”

“And that time with Beau —”

“Not an accident. I’m sorry.” He is never, ever going to be able to look Fjord in the eyes again. 

“Do you think it's a, a curse or something?” 

“I think,” and Caduceus has to breathe before he says this aloud, before he makes the idea real. “I think it’s just me. I think it was always a part of me and I just never knew, just always kept it dormant.” 

“Do you think your family - do you think they knew? That it’s the same with them?”

Caduceus has had the same thought, and each time it makes his heart sink like lead. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t ask.” 

“But if something’s wrong —”

“If I ask them, if I tell them what’s happening to me — I’ll be admitting I’m the one who’s failed. That I wasn’t strong enough to stick to our values, our traditions.” He feels so cold, so ashamed.

Fjord is silent. He sits next to Caduceus, lays a hand on his shoulder that Caduceus is not strong enough to shove off. 

“Okay,” Fjord says. “What can I do?”

“Why would you — you don’t have to deal with this. This isn’t your problem.”

“Of course it’s my problem. I love you. I don’t want to see you scared of yourself like this.”

“I don’t want to hurt people. Or things. I know sometimes we have to hurt things, but I don’t want to be looking at some little animal in the street and thinking of it as a meal. I don’t want to be claiming some blood price off the people we fight. And I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

“What if I let you bite me?”

“If you…?”

“If I let you bite me. Drink from me...take a little bit of flesh off the top. You can heal me, can’t you?”

“I wouldn’t ask that —”

“That’s why you’re not asking. I’m offering. I don’t want you to suffer, and I can take it. If I let you, could you control yourself?”

Caduceus turns away, presses his hand against his mouth and bites his hand, not enough to draw blood but enough for the pain to ground him. He breathes through his nose. 

“I think so,” he whispers. “I think I could if it was you, but _please_ , Fjord —”

“Shhhhhh.” He watches as Fjord unbuckles his armor, takes off his shirt, pulls Caduceus’s face down against his bare collarbone. “You’re a healer. Avoid the vital places. Help yourself.” 

The first bite is the hardest, the hardest to contend with, but as soon as he sinks his teeth into Fjord’s shoulder and tastes blood, the feeding comes naturally. He is careful, and tender, though he knows it must hurt from the way Fjord tenses and groans underneath him. At first it is just blood, just piercing the skin and lapping at the blood that follows, but Caduceus is emboldened by taste and the sweet satisfaction of the urge that’s bubbled along inside of him for days. He sinks his teeth in further on the next bite, ripping away a small piece of flesh. Fjord breathes heavily beneath him, but he does not scream. Does not tell Caduceus to stop.

Between the blood or the soft entwinement of their bodies, Caduceus can feel himself growing hard, and when he brings a hand between Fjord’s thighs, he finds him in the same state. Wordlessly, they slide their trousers down, and Caduceus takes hold of both their cocks in his hand. The sounds Fjord makes in pain and pleasure grow indistinguishable from one another. He leans up to kiss Caduceus, not shying away from the taste of his own blood. 

Caduceus comes with his teeth buried in Fjord’s shoulder, and he continues to stroke Fjord off until his own orgasm hits him. Spring-green flesh seals over the wounds he’s left as he heals Fjord, and Caduceus licks up the last of the blood from smooth skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to asterCrash for beta-reading this.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3


End file.
